1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a tape printer apparatus in which a plurality of tape cassettes containing tapes of different widths are selectively mounted, and printing is effected on the tapes contained in the mounted tape cassette.
2. Description of the Related Art
Tape printer apparatuses, as disclosed in European Patent Applications 0451830A2, 0322918A2 and 0449465A, have been manufactured, wherein key-input information is printed on a tape with an adhesive, the tape is cut to a predetermined length, and the tape is adhered.
In such printer apparatuses, tapes are contained in cassette cases, and a cassette case mounted in the apparatus is exchanged with another one to exchange easily a tape used in the apparatus with another tape.
There is also a printer apparatus having a plurality of tape cassettes containing tapes of different widths so that tapes of various widths can be used in the apparatus by selectively mounting the tape cassettes in the apparatus.
In the apparatus capable of using tapes of various widths, it is troublesome to set a printing size such that printed characters are located within the width of the selected tape.
The applicant paid attention to the fact that the thickness of a tape cassette varies in accordance with the width of a tape to be contained in the tape cassette, and invented a technique of detecting the width of a tape contained in the tape cassette by detecting the thickness of the tape cassette. This invention has been filed with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office as U.S. Serial No. 07/820,574 (abandoned in favor or Ser. No. 08/014,097, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,253,334.
In the case of detecting the tape width on the basis of the thickness of the tape cassette, there is a problem that the same number of cassette cases as the number of tape widths must be provided.
In addition, in the former application, a switch for detecting the thickness of the cassette case in an analog manner is employed to reduce the number of switches to one. If the switch for detecting the thickness in an analog manner is used, the structure of the apparatus and circuit configurations become complex.